It's the Everest of music and Mark Isaacs has scaled it twice
Sydney composer Mark Isaacs certainly thinks so, comparing the large-scale structure and myriad details of a symphony to the novels of two of his favourite writers, James Joyce and George Eliot.
'I like the long form of the symphony – not so much the length, but that it has chapters,' he says. 'That almost holographic aspect of it is something that deeply appeals to me.'
Isaacs is the author of two symphonies for orchestra, plus a smaller-scale chamber symphony. Last month he released a recording of his Symphony No. 2 with the Czech National Symphony Orchestra, which he conducted in Prague.
The first movement begins with a flourish from the brass, and a sighing theme from the strings, before trumpets and a dramatic rhythm open a section reminiscent of classic Hollywood film scores.
Isaacs has written a tonal three-movement symphony when that designation often is avoided by contemporary composers, even those who write for large orchestra. He observes that the symphony as a historic form was rejected in the modernist era in a way that the novel, for example, wasn't.
'The thing about modernism was, 'We're not going to write symphonies any more',' Isaacs says from his home in southern Sydney.
'I find it interesting that it didn't happen in the modernist literary movement – James Joyce wrote novels. But in music, the symphony was not a hip thing to do. I sort of embrace it – I write sonatas, I write symphonies. I like to take a generic form as a mould I can pour something into.'
Isaacs, 66, has a profusion of curly grey hair and a full beard to match. For many years he was better known in jazz circles as an improvising pianist, but he says that, since age 12, he has wanted to write symphonies.
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